2 October 2005 | Vol. 5, No. 3

She Makes Me a Little Sculpture

by JAMES GRINWIS

A scrawny hippo, a tar-caked disc

hopping around out back.

A rogue flipped on his back,

eerie pastels shooting out of him

to drench the smart crowds

of smoke-addled rooms. The scales

of rogue fishes akimbo

in dog light. The way she tucks one knee

into the other knee,

where love's a crushed bird

in desert clothes. Gloam

munching the cool, heady gloom.

This is the swish-swish of a monk

breathing the sepulchral ferns.

Of a strip of time about to unsheathe

its stick into the ashtray

being cleansed of straw wrappers

and asbestos peninsulas. A spy

en route, twilight easing through

the fuzzy meadows of televisions

and tea parlors, owls slashing

silently the ends of light.